Monitoring recycling bins in Wayland

Look around at our schools, playgrounds and ball fields, and you’ll see the standard green toters for trash paired with new bright blue toters for all recycling.

Staff reports

Look around at our schools, playgrounds and ball fields, and you’ll see the standard green toters for trash paired with new bright blue toters for all recycling.

At the playground at the Cochituate Ball Field, note Pat Conaway’s “buddy bin” for recycled bottles and aluminum cans. For the past several years, every week, former middle school teacher Pat Conaway traveled around Wayland, sometimes with volunteers, to empty these “buddy bins” into his trailer, which was then driven to the Wayland transfer station.

Now, thanks to the efforts by the Green Team, the Board of Public Works, and the Recreation Commission, every trash toter is now paired with a recycling bin that will be emptied weekly.

A happy Pat Conaway says, “No community comes close to Natick and now Wayland in terms of outdoor recycling at parks, fields (and) downtown areas … A few weeks ago I counted 70 trash barrels on Boston Common, and not one recycle bin.”

The Green Team hopes that all baseball, soccer, softball, crew, football, track, cheerleading and lacrosse coaches will direct students and parents to use the new blue recycling toters. Even better, bring reusable water bottles to the fields that can be refilled at the fountains or at home. Learn more online (www.waylandgreenteam.org).

Note that now that Wayland has adopted single-stream recycling, cardboard and papers can be added to the plastic, aluminum and glass in the new blue toters.